from sl4j.org:"The Simple Logging Facade for Java or (SLF4J) serves as a simple facade or abstraction for various logging frameworks, e.g. java.util.logging, log4j and logback, allowing the end user to plug in the desired logging framework at deployment time."

A couple of months ago a team mate created a SL4J adapter for Liferay's logging service. We replaced the sl4j adapter for log4j that Liferay ships with (sl4j-log4j12.jar) with the new adapter and now copy the adapter to our plugins at deploy time by defining the adapter as a dependency in portal.dependency.jars in liferay-plugin-package.properties.

We can now control log levels in the control panel and so on for the plugins that use SL4J.

The code is available at https://github.com/bjorn-ryding/slf4j-liferay-adapter

Could it be interesting to ship Liferay with this adapter? VGR who financed the development is willing to donate the code.

This is great stuff. I was thinking to do same couple of years ago, but did not anything about it. Slf4j it is easy to bind most of the application servers at market, so please I make issue to LR jira and I will vote for it.

Liferay actually implemented a similar solution shortly after my post. Their implementation is in util-java and makes it trivial to use the Liferay logging system through SLF4J in Liferay 6.1. However, if you would like to use another SLF4J binding than the Liferay one it's a bit annoying that their implementation ended up in util-java.